Matt Tuckey is a writer from Oldham, England. He covers celebrities, night life, Manchester, fitness, creative writing, social media, confidence and events. Some of this may, in some way, help others. Or maybe it'll just entertain you for a while.

Wednesday, 22 February 2012

Barton turns furiously against the crowd.BARTONI'm a writer, you monsters! I CREATE! He points at his head.BARTON...This is my uniform!He taps his skull.BARTON...THIS is how I serve the common man! THIS is where I –WHAPP! An infantry man tags Barton's chin on the button. Bodies surge. The crowd gasps. The band blares nightmarishly on.

A
passage from the screenplay to Barton Fink (1991), by Ethan and Joel
Coen.

It's
time for another monthly challenge. It's been a while. It's time to
focus on something for one month, and see if I can improve my
situation. I've been debating over a number of different ideas- a few
areas of my life need a good kick up the arse- but I think I've
identified the most currently attainable target. It's time I got some
old stories published.

I've
been putting off sending writing out for a long time while I sorted
one thing out after another. But now I want to get back into the
swing of firing out work, eating rejections like Weetabix (four at
breakfast, at least) and pulling in the odd acceptance here and
there.

Over
the last few months I've polished off a number of short stories and
poems that have been critiqued, rewritten and prepared for
publication. Then I've left them gathering metaphorical dust on my
hard drive. But they won't for much longer.

Using
Duotrope's Digest, I plan to fire out each item ten times a piece.
Once each one is done and in the outbox, I'll dig through some
unfinished pieces, sharpen them and throw them to publishers too.

Due
to Inland Revenue issues it would be more of a hinderance than a help
to get paid for these stories, so I'll be giving these away for free.
The upsides to doing this are numerous. Non-paying magazines are ran
by editors who are much more willing to publish high numbers of
stories from numerous contributors. Their magazines run like blog
sites, updating numerous times daily. They have unlimited pages and
unlimited copies. They are accessible to read by anyone with internet
access anywhere in the world and cater for pretty much any niche of
story you want. Online magazines that don't pay give the least
rejections and all online magazines can be linked to other webpages-
for instance, this blog.

It's
time to put my metaphorical uniform on, like Mr Fink did, and start
showing people just what it is I create.

Monday, 20 February 2012

A
fascinating shot of Harrison Ford and Daryl Hannah, presumably taken
during the filming of Blade Runner in 1982. (Courtesy Kaytaria,
Flickr)

I've
now spend a month working on endurance and cardio at the gym. “Lost
a few pounds in my waist fo ya,” as Missy Elliot would say.

But
I'm gradually getting back to how I used to look, pre-moving out and
nose-diving into Tesco-assisted coprophagia. I'm eating better, sleeping better and thinking better. Not to
mention, looking better.

I
rounded off the month with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, an
SF novel by Philip K Dick. If it sounds familiar, you might know it
by its film adaptation name, Blade Runner.

It's
a very traditional SF book- cleansed dialogue, large, shiny
cityscapes, hard science but not too technical in description. It's
also in third person, which surprised me, as Ridley Scott's
theatrical version of Blade Runner has a (slightly dodgy) commentary
from bounty hunter Deckard (Harrison Ford)- possibly to beef up the
“noir” feel Scott was going for. There's also a lot in the book
that doesn't make it into the film- Deckard's wife, the intense
coveting of live animals (most of which are endangered) by most of
the characters in the story (in particular by the wife), and more. It
makes for a fascinating read.

As
well as entertaining, it's also prophetic. Characters in the book
occasionally dial a number on a “mood organ” to adjust their
attitude the day, a device for instant remedies to any condition, no
matter how minor. Did Dick forsee medical services like NHS Direct,
or pharmacutical products like Prozac?

I
had a few problems with the book, though. Deckard needed to test
certain characters with a questionairre to check whether they were
android or human, using an empathy test. Why couldn't he just x-ray
them? Or take a blood sample? Am I missing something?

Having
said that, it's a great read. I'm definitely in the mood for some
Director's Cut viewing soon.

Over
a period of 3 days, the book took 5 hours 26 minutes to read.
“Cycling speed”, of course, means reading at the pace of a
ten-year-old. And checking the Wikipedia summary, I noticed I'd
missed quite a lot of the plot.

So
perhaps reading and cycling aren't meant to be together. Particularly
not when the reading material is complex science fiction. Reading and
working out- separately- are guilty pleasures as whichever one I'm
doing, I always feel I should be doing the other- or writing. So now
the month is over, maybe it's time to knuckle down to something
writing-related.

Tuesday, 14 February 2012

Fold
them up and put them in the middle in two respective piles. Ask
someone to pick one slip from each pile. Whatever is written on the
slips, that's the subject and object the group will work with. Now imagine that object had a voice of its own. What opinions would it have on the subject? write a first person monologue for ten minutes investigating this.

I
chose not to use any of these. Instead, I devised my own (typically
surreal) anecdote.

The
United Nations recently came to the conclusion that they have been
unfairly slack on a number of global issues- the financial crisis,
third world poverty, the War on Terror, ad nauseum. That's why,
instead of repeatedly relying on politicians who lie and fail us,
they have turned to me: a shoe.

The
political landscape of the Earth may be tumultuous but, I hear you
ask, why ask a piece of footwear to take responsibility for such
affairs? Simple. The UN is determined to stamp down on global
terrorism. That's where I come in. They want to lace up relations
with eastern countries like China. They want to put the boot in with
greedy Wall Street bankers who- ironically- the politicians
themselves live off.

I
have been called in because they need a well-heeled individual who
won't pussyfoot around such subjects and will put his foot down on
corporate greed. I will put my heart and, um, “sole” into it. I
realise that a pedalogical ankle- I mean, angle- might be unusual,
but once I am bestowed these powers those Wall Street Wankers will
realise that the shoe is most definitely on the other foot.

We'll
soon be making big steps towards economic stability, allowing smaller
countries to once again stand on their own two feet.

Monday, 13 February 2012

Well,
Mr Circiello- I stuck to the instructions in Keda Black's Classics
cookbook, so as far as I'm concerned the only thing twisted around in
my dish was the pasta. But what I expected to be a nighmarish
culinary ordeal turned out to be a pretty simple affair- I just
followed the instructions. The only complication was rearranging the
utensils in my minuscule kitchen so that I could chop the onion and
garlic whilst standing under the extractor fan. No tears from me.

Saturday, 11 February 2012

“And
you say, Absurd! Absurd be- exploded! Absurd! My dear boys, what can
you expect from a man who out of sheer nervousness had just flung
overboard a new pair of shoes. Now I think of it, it is amazing I did
not shed tears.”

Marlow,
Heart of Darkness

Joseph
Conrad was many things. A writer, a sailor- a captain, in fact- and
as the opening quote suggests, a bit of a weirdo. But besides all of
that, Goddamn, he was one racist motherfucker.

Heart
of Darkness, his story of Marlow, a seaman in search of a mysterious
ivory trader Kurtz, has dated badly. Published in 1899, the book
follows Marlow through the African continent, meeting various
rumour-spreaders, travellers and dodgy types- most of whom are
inherently discriminative against the local black people- as is
Marlow himself. At the end of the 19th century, attitudes like this
were no doubt widespread and instilled by a general fear of the
unknown- a feeling exacerbated by the need to travel to strange lands
to make a living.

If
you can see through the prejudice- which, admittedly, the book is
drenched in- what remains is a beautifully written, nightmarish tale
of British imperialism. It takes a little time to tune in to the
century-old language, but thankfully Penguin Classics provides notes
to explain details like names of companies that have long-since
ceased trading, words that have dropped off the lexicon, and further
descriptions of real people who Conrad fictionalised. You'd be lost
without this section.

In
1979 Francis Ford Coppola adapted the book into Apocalypse Now,
transferring the action to the Vietnam War. I did a dissertation on
the film at uni back in '02-'03, so I know the film quite well. It's
fascinating to see which characters and story elements were kept and
which were cut or adapted. In the book, Marlow is already travelling
and hears about Kurtz. He goes to meet him, and Kurtz dies after a
conversation with the seaman. In the film, Captain Willard is sent
out to kill Kurtz, who is a US General gone insane. The soldier slams
a machete into the man numerous times. In Hearts, an unnamed Russian
trader tells the protagonist of Kurtz's influence over the locals. In
Apocalypse the trader becomes a US photojournalist (played with manic
intensity by the brilliant Dennis Hopper).

According
to my notes it took 8 hours to read this riveting book on the bike,
in three sittings. When the prose is old-fashioned, your brain really
has to slow down and translate what's happening from page to mind's
eye. It would have been easier to read if Penguin had put the
necessary appendices on the same page as the related prose, rather
than have a whole section of explanations at the end of the book.

Now-
here's where my knowledge ends- if I break from training to eat, then
go back to the bike and carry on, my stomach will be full again. So
will I then go back to burning food instead of fat? Comment below...

Thursday, 9 February 2012

The Poke, a UK comedy website featuring spoof news, describes itself as
“time well wasted”.
I follow them on Twitter here.

They
recently asked for poetry in haiku format, to be submitted through
Twitter with the hashtag #newshaiku. Specifically, the haiku was to
be “About the news. Or sport. Or entertainment. Or whatever you
want.”

Friday, 3 February 2012

What I say is that, if a fellow really
likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.

-A
A Milne, Author

Well,
yeah. Y'know. Potatoes are good. I must say, though, that I prefer
them in chip form. Keda Black says use a deep fat fryer. I'm
healthier than Keda Black. Thankfully, I can (vaguely) remember how
my mum taught me to make chips her way.

Thursday, 2 February 2012

“You
can get a steak here, daddio. Don't be such a-” (draws
rectangle with fingers)

-Mia
Wallace (Uma Thurman), Pulp Fiction

Whereas
I would have just bunged a lump of steak in a pan and given it four
each side, Keda Black suggests preparing the steak itself by rubbing
olive oil into the meat, then salting and peppering the meat as it
cooks. So that's what I did. It tasted great, but the recipe didn't
suggest putting anything with it. The meal was the meat. So that's
what I had.

Question:
Is Keda Black turning me into a robot? Or a Mia-Wallace-style
invisible rectangle? Stay tuned to find out.

Would You Like to Write for Power is a State of Mind?

Here at PIASOM I'm looking for guest bloggers to get involved. I want you to:1) Tell the world about the superb city of Greater Manchester. If know of something quirky, awesome, bizzare or important happening, why not get involved?2) Show me your ideas of producing great literature. Do you perform excercises at a writing group? Do you compete in poetry slams / rap battles? Are you setting up a magazine? Tell me and get your writing seen. More info:http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2011/03/would-you-like-to-write-for-power-is.html